[CF List] The 'dis'economy of crossfire

[Peter Mardahl]

About money, etc:

I think some of the ideas put forth are good ones and
would be nice, but herre are my comments:

1)  Castles sound really cool.  Great way to blow millions.

2)  And players will have millions.  No matter what.  Unless
you put a prohibitive cost on "repairing" artifacts....
And then, my opinion is that the game will be ruined by
burdening the player with either constant money-grubbing
(no fun) or having no effect other than wasting their time
spending a little of their excess dealing with an annoying
hassle.

I do NOT think it is realistic to think that you'll
be able to balance this perfectly, so it'll turn into black
and white:  EITHER players will have way too much money
OR they will never have enough.  Reason?  Simple.  I
don't think that you can balance things to within 10 percent.
10 percent of millions is still way too much money.

3)  Limiting how much shops can buy screws low-level players
who must take the dregs of what high-level players leave.
Negatory on this one for that reason.  Limiting WHAT they
can buy might make more sense, but probably won't make
much impact.

I fundamentally think that this problem is insoluble.
Successful players will naturally be filthy rich, unless
you hang some annoying, un-fun burdens around their necks.
And those same burdens will perhaps cripple low-level players....

I mean, Bill Gates and lots of CEOs are filthy rich, and
they have a gov't monkey on their backs slurping 60% of their
income.  60% isn't enough to make them un-filthy-rich.

And being filthy rich has few real consequences for
the game:  all it means is that money stops mattering after
you've achieved a certain degree of success.  Life is like
that too....  Raising the prices of staple things so that
only Bill Gates can afford them isn't the solution.

I like the castle idea, limiting monsters/generator is good
for many other reasons besides wealth,

PeterM